Happy

Pre-Thanksgiving Day

Morning

There is just waaaaaaay too much going on in my life right now, and it is too sadly complicated to get into it for personal reasons. Why does it always seem like a constant stream of shit is there ready to hit the fan?

This will be another link dump, and if any of the news reads are repeats, oops.

When Bode Miller, the Olympic ski star known for daring Alpine racing, met Sara A. McKenna in San Diego last year through the high-end matchmaker Kelleher International, they were both professing interest in finding a marriage partner, she recalls.

The relationship did not last long — but she did become pregnant. And now the skier, 36, and Ms. McKenna, 27, a former Marine and firefighter who is attending Columbia University with G.I. Bill support, are locked in a cross-country custody fight that has become not only tabloid fodder but also a closely watched legal battle over the rights of pregnant women to travel and make life choices.

A U.S. court actually ruled that a woman who left California, while pregnant, to attend an Ivy League college, after having been exhorted by her ex-boyfriend to abort the pregnancy, absconded with her own fetus…

[…]

I don’t really know what to say to this, except that this doesn’t occur in a vacuum divorced from the context of, to name two examples, pressure to keep birth control from women (including hormonal birth control on insurance plans and Plan B emergency birth control in hospitals and granting pharmacists the ‘right’ to not dispense birth control unless they really want to) and movement to restrict the abortion rights of women.

If you can deny women the ability to prevent and/or end pregnancies, and if you can rule that pregnant women aren’t allowed to move because it’s abduction of, ooops, appropriation of a man’s fetus, then you can reduce cis fertile women (which are not all women, but are still a shitload of people) to a socially immobile worker class — unable to move out of abusive relationships, unable to move to a better support network, unable to move to a better education or a different job. Corporate dystopia and religious dystopia meet, as always, over the control of women’s bodies.

That first-trimester abortion, which last time I checked was legal in this country, could make a judge strip Lisa’s custody of the two precious babies she obsessed, agonized and fussed over from the day they were born.

Lisa and husband Manuel John Mehos, founder and CEO of Houston’s Green Bank, split in 2011, ending five years of wedded misery. Now Manuel is waging a scorched-earth campaign for custody of the couple’s daughter, Macy, 6, and son, John, 4 — a bizarre battle in which Lisa’s fitness as a mother is being judged by standards one might see in Texas. Or the Middle East.

“I’m divorced. I’m not Mother Teresa!’’ a teary Lisa told me. “I feel like I’ve been beaten up and raped.’’

Lisa, who lost temporary custody of the kids in August, is now bracing for the possibility that she’ll lose them permanently.

While Lisa’s abortion is relevant, according to Judge Sattler, Manuel’s sexual behavior is apparently not. A forensic psychologist testified that Manuel had confessed to visiting massage parlors, where he paid for sex. Lisa sees a double standard: “The court jumped at the chance to use the stigma of abortion to openly scorn, interrogate, and question my ability to be a worthy parent,” she told me.

Court transcripts reveal that Alter has argued — and Judge Sattler has agreed — that the abortion speaks to Lisa Mehos’ credibility. First, Alter says Lisa was dishonest because she claimed to be Catholic but had an abortion. Lisa had requested that her children spend Easter with her family, who observe the holiday, instead of with her husband — who, as an atheist,does not. “I never criticized him for being an atheist,” Lisa said. “I simply said, since you don’t celebrate religious holidays, could the children spend Easter with my parents because we do celebrate religious holidays.” The prosecution suggests that the fact that Lisa had an abortion as a Catholic calls her credibility into question. But 27 percent of the women who receive abortions in the U.S. are Catholic. Are they also untrustworthy?

Yesterday, Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Lori Sattler ruled that Lisa Mehos, who is locked in a custody battle with her husband, banker Manuel Mehos, had to testify about having an abortion.

Why would Lisa’s abortion reflect on her fitness to raise her children?

Given that this is happening in New York rather than Mississippi, the argument is not the backward claim that she can’t possibly love her kids if she had an abortion. Rather, the argument is that she demanded custody of the kids over a weekend when she knew she was going to dump them off with a sitter so she could undergo a medical procedure.

Still, injecting the emotionally charged issue of abortion into the matter fits into an overall strategy of demeaning and vilifying a woman’s sexuality under a double standard that brushes past the transgressions of the father…

And then there is this:

A divorced parent neglecting kids on the weekend he or she has them is a fair issue in a custody hearing. However, the children were left with their grandmother during Lisa’s procedure, and honestly visiting with grandma is not neglect. Which brings us to the real issue here. Eleanor Alter of Kasowitz Benson — who represented Mia Farrow against Woody Allen — is super smart, and knows how to get the best for her client. In this case that involves playing to reptilian impulses (or being “aggressive and innovative,” in Kasowitz-speak).

Alter said she should also be allowed to question Lisa Mehos about the procedure because “this is a woman who complains that she’s under great stress only caused by Mr. Mehos. I would be the first person to acknowledge that having an abortion, especially a two- to three-month late abortion, would be stressful.”

She said she also wanted to know whether the kids “were exposed to this man, how it all came about.”

“If this man was coming in the house, if she’s out of the house to see him, if it was date rape, that’s relevant,” Alter said.

So there’s a couple things to unpack there. First, check out the hysterical woman who’s troubled by all her lady business! See, it’s not the man who might have punched her a few months ago, it’s the ovaries.

Second, the abortion is just the setup for a thorough-going “slut shaming.” Could a divorced woman have a… boyfriend?!? Oh no! Alter adds the possibility of date rape because, I guess it’s supposed to be generous to imply that rather than have a consensual sex life, maybe Lisa was taken advantage of? Maybe?

The judge sided with Alter, noting that Lisa Mehos had previously testified she had never had any men over to her New York apartment. “I do find it to be relevant. The children were in her care at the time,” Sattler said.

Lisa Mehos, 38, then testified that she became pregnant after a one-time fling with a longtime friend at his place.

If she’d already testified that she never had men over at her house, why the hell would the fact that she got pregnant suggest in any way that her prior testimony was unreliable? Can women only get pregnant at home now? If they’re in another bed, does the body have ways of shutting that whole thing down? “I watched last year’s Super Bowl” does not cast doubt on the testimony “I don’t have a TV in my house.” Unless you add in all kinds of aspersions about female sexuality that permeate society infecting men and women.

And about that double-standard?

Lisa Mehos wasn’t the only one to be embarrassed in court — she testified that her ex-husband, who heads a bank in Texas, had tearfully confessed to her that he had cheated on her dozens of times with prostitutes.

I get that the Daily News is reporting on the controversy surrounding the forced testimony about an abortion rather than the trial as a whole, but it sure seems odd that a hooker habit doesn’t raise the same ferocity of “OH MY GOD HE’S AN UNFIT PARENT” as having one fling with a friend.

This is Vanessa VanDyke, an Orlando teenager who has been threatened with expulsion from Faith Christian Academy, the private school which she has been attending since the third grade, because administrators say that her natural hair is a “distraction,” and the student handbook forbids hairstyles that cause disruption in the classroom.

What disruption there has been is that her classmates are teasing her about her hair. So, of course administrators have asked Vanessa to change her hair, rather than admonish her classmates to stop being assholes.

Presumably, this school includes among its staff some teachers and administrators who were alive during the ’80s, when white girls were teasing their hair at least that big. (And somehow, despite virtually every female classmate’s picture in my yearbooks looking a helluva lot like that picture of Vanessa above, we all managed to get an education.) But of course it has nothing to do with race. Ahem.

The identities of the three people seeking to stop the John Doe investigation into Gov. Scott Walker’s campaign and more than two dozen conservative political groups remain a secret.

But the names of their seven attorneys are public, and it’s an impressive list. It includes a former U.S. attorney in Missouri, one of Madison’s top criminal defense lawyers and the former head of the federal task force investigating financial fraud by the nation’s major banks.

Five petitions were filed last week seeking to halt the secret investigation launched in February 2012 in Milwaukee County that has spread to Dane, Iowa, Dodge and Columbia counties. The petitions were filed in the 4th District Court of Appeals against Reserve Judge Gregory Peterson, who is overseeing the probe.

Afghanistan’s President Hamid Karzai has refused to sign a security deal with the United States, the White House said, raising the prospect of a complete withdrawal of U.S. troops from the war-ravaged nation next year.

Karzai told U.S. National Security Adviser Susan Rice in Kabul on Monday that the United States must put an immediate end to military raids on Afghan homes and release all remaining Afghan Guantanamo detainees before he would sign a bilateral security pact, his spokesman said.

On Sunday the Loya Jirga, an assembly of Afghan elders, endorsed the Bilateral Security Agreement (BSA) under those conditions, and Karzai suggested postponing the signing until after national elections — in which he will not be running — next year.

The impasse strengthens doubts about whether any U.S. and NATO troops will remain after the end of next year in Afghanistan, which faces an insurgency by the Taliban and is still training its military, and whether they would be immune from prosecution.

Forty-two fashion designers have been tapped to participate in UNICEF’s designer dolls Les Frimousses initiative, which means it’s again socially acceptable for adults to swoon over dolls the way they did in the springtime of life. The bad news is you won’t be able to procure them with tooth fairy money. Last year, the reserve price for each doll was $647 at current exchange. But since you’re not the selfish brat you once were, you’ll splurge because UNICEF will distribute the funds raised to help vaccinate children in Sudan’s Darfur region.

Get a preview of the pint-sized fashion plates, from the like of Chanel, Dior, and more, below:

Alright, I don’t know about “ruining” your childhood, but when I read where SpongeBob’s voice originated from, my fondness for that little square yellow happy dude suddenly made sense.

3. SpongeBob SquarePants was inspired by a misanthropic elf.

The character:

SpongeBob would probably sound a lot different if the character’s voice actor had never run into a bitter, foul-mouthed little person.

While auditioning for a TV commercial many years ago, Tom Kenny came across a group of little people in elf costumes who were trying out for a Christmas-themed ad. The sad fact of the matter is that not every vertically-challenged person can play Tyrion Lannister, so many shorter actors find themselves typecast as Santa’s elves and the like, which must do wonders for their outlook on the world. It certainly did with the elf Kenny ran into, who by the sound of it was one of the most profane people he ever met, loudly complaining about his lot in life and using the words “fuck” and “shit” like most people use commas.

He then went on to play a supporting role in “Bad Santa.”

The combination of the heavy swearing and the actor’s high-pitched, fast talking voice left a pretty big impression on Kenny. So much so that when he auditioned for the role of SpongeBob some time later, he remembered and imitated the voice of the swearing little man in a bright green elf costume, which instantly landed him the part. A part, mind you, that is defined by its wide-eyed innocence and yet traces its heritage to, as Kenny described him, a pissed off, vulgar “munchkin.”

Geez…not only was a midget the inspiration for the voice of SpongeBob…it was a foul mouth midget to boot!

Have a fucking awesome Wednesday y’all…and enjoy this day before Thanksgiving.

Like this:

Related

JJ….Thank you for the great links this morning. I look forward to reading them all and appreciate the work you do here. Please know I keep you in my good thoughts. Peace to you.

And thanks for the offering the story of this Pope, he has been a wonderful surprise, so far. The notion that the Pope would publicly call upon the powerful rich to “share” and to end income inequality is stunning. Taking such a bold stand is not how the church has behaved in my lifetime, and needless to say it is not how the church has accumulated its great wealth. I can’t wait to see how this Pope handles the Catholic church’s own contradictions concerning wealth. It should be interesting.

And in news that matters to women and all people who believe in personal freedom I offer this link

FFRF, a national state/church watchdog is calling the consumer boycott in response to Hobby Lobby’s challenge of ObamaCare’s contraceptive mandate. The Supreme Court today accepted a case involving its challenge of the requirement that contraception be fully covered in insurance policies. Hobby Lobby unilaterally opposes some forms of contraception, based on the religious views of its founder David Green.

It shouldn’t be too hard to boycott Hobby Lobby, the merchandise there is overpriced and the quality is not that special. FU Hobby Lobby!!!

The pope is NOT on the road to acceptance of women to serve in the church, other than as nuns………….therefore he is planning on a special day, how to make women feel important, even thought they can’t be higher up in the catholic church, think it ought to be called “the day of perpetuation”.

That’s true Fannie. Trust me, I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for equality for women in the catholic church or any other church for that matter.When I figured out that most of organized religion was creating hell on earth for me and most other women, the decision to not participate was easy.

But he did not go far enough. The world’s natural resources are being consumed at an alarming rate and the issue of overpopulation looms on the horizon. Climate change is a real factor but few in power actually address this issue.

Women are being dragged back into another century when their right to control their own bodies is being harnessed by law which threatens to turn them into unwanted baby making machines based on some “religious theory” that has no basis in fact let alone common sense but he refuses to even “go there” concerning women serving as priests.

He may be considered a “little more open minded” than those who came before him but he is still trapped in century old mandates they have no place in today’s day and age.

No disrespect, but I find religion and its adherents an obstacle to progress and though the pundits may be having a “fainting moment” over his missive I am not that impressed.

Until women are treated as equals I won’t hold my breath waiting for “change”.

I agree Pat. The catholic church and most every other church are nowhere near becoming a vehicle of equality for women. Still, I find it interesting and it brings a smile to my face to see a Pope finger wagging at the rich & powerful. I hope he’s making people like Paul Ryan very uncomfortable. I’m also hoping that Francis opens his mind to the reality that poverty for many women and children is driven even harder by the lack of access to reproductive choices and reproductive freedom. If the church would just return to it’s earlier position that life begins at the quickening, it would at the very least lift it’s ban on contraception and first trimester abortion, which would be revolutionary for catholic women, particularly those in poverty. For many years I’ve argued that denying contraception to women was the way Catholicism propagated the faith. Forcing women to have children insures survival of religious beliefs, but I think Francis can see that tack is no longer working, particularly in societies where access to birth control and abortion services is becoming easier. All the church’s current position does is insure that poverty wins. Poverty seems to be a central issue for this pope, if he can connect the dots between poverty and the inability to plan family size, he might do something revolutionary.

Also noteworthy, this pope is actually polling individual catholics at the parish level to get their views on abortion, contraception, divorce & remarriage, sexual orientation, gay marriage, the role of women in the church, etc. That in itself is something I would never have believed could have happened. The institutionalized catholic church never gave a damn what individual Catholic’s thought or hoped for. Makes me think this guy might be a reformer. As I stated in a post yesterday, it doesn’t change my life one way or the other, because I don’t need what the church is peddling, but I find it a sign of hope for those who do.

Unfortunately the hierarchy is heavily loaded with white men who, because of the doctrine itself, regard “sexuality” as only something reserved for procreation. The Catholic Church holds the belief that sex outside of marriage is the fault of consensual women. It is the outgrowth of the “virgin myth”.

Therefore any woman faced with an unwanted pregnancy and seeks a remedy is considered “impure”. Within marriage that same woman is “revered” for having as many children as she can physically bear. Our generation grew up with that proposition.

Rick Santorum follows this doctrine while condemning sexuality as “sinful”. But he is actually following the dictates of the Catholic Church as it currently stands. I don’t see this changing any time soon.

It is really scary what is happening to pregnant women these days. I don’t even recall this kind of controlling behavior from judges before abortion was legal. Maybe I just didn’t hear about it. Women are in danger of being reduced to a servant/slave class. Next they’ll decide to kill off menopausal women because we can’t make babies anymore.

What makes the judge’s behavior in the Lisa Mehos case even more distressing (if I understand it correctly) is that the judge is a woman. A well trained, well connected and compensated woman who might have a perception concerning which side her professional and political bread is buttered on. UGH!!!!

This is what “tolerance” produces. Remember back a few years when women posters insisted they would only vote for women in upcoming elections regardless of their positions?

Remember when women sought to include pro life supporters into the feminist movement again regardless of their positions on women’s rights? Remember when Sarah Palin was called a “feminist” because she shared our private parts and ran for office? All big mistakes when taken as a whole since it was this philosophy that turned many of these states into “jailhouses” where women’s rights went to die.

The rise of the Tea Party and the religionists who supported their efforts has brought this nation into a new low when it comes to women’s issues. Many congressional women stand by these men who keep chipping away at individual freedoms so we can’t blame it all on their male counterparts.

Politics mixed with religion is a sure sign of failure for women since elections are not decided by just men alone. They are aided and abetted by enough women who are disinterested in the Constitution but cling to religious theories that in many European countries have been dismissed as an unwanted interference.

“Remember back a few years when women posters insisted they would only vote for women in upcoming elections regardless of their positions?”

Yep, I remember and you know where I was on that issue. If I remember correctly we had each others back quite a few times concerning Palin. I was literally run off of one blog where the Palin supporters swarmed on me like a bunch of hornets when I dared to write that I would not vote for ANY woman who doesn’t support the rights of all women to make their own decisions regarding their own body. And then I went on to say that those women were not feminists and then I elaborated concerning my objections to her asinine statements concerning L/G’s. I’m still stinging from that encounter. :-) I think Peggy Sue also got stung by the same crowd!

Yup. A lot of us got witch hunted for that as I recall. Women that buy I to the idea that sacred vessel paradigm are just enabling the subjugation of women. Many do so to be protected from violence and poverty but then there are naked opportunists like Schafly. She taught me early on that some women will turn for an easy shot at power and money.

They surrounded us like sharks! Told that we didn’t know what we were talking about, called us “sexists” and haters because we refused to go along with the idea that Palin – who by the way is a strong supporter of Schafly – was a feminist regardless of her positions that went against feminism.

I remember being tongue lashed by Violet and threatened with banishment because unlike her I had not “studied” feminism and could not possibly understand.

The fact that my gender alone, along with my experience, did not count over there forced me to “banish myself” from the pointy headed intellectuals who seemed to have defined my role all on their own.

I never posted at Violet’s blog, but I did lurk from time to time. Sadly, they never could differentiate between defending Palin against sexist comments, which I think any woman should do, and going along with Palin’s anti-choice, anti-gay rhetoric because she too had a uterus.

I think they got pulled into the Palin Club before they understood what she was really about and by the time they got the whole story of WHO she really was they were too invested and cowardly to reject her.

Violet Socks was never a supporter of Sarah Palin, Pat.
Never.
However, you were.
You and your friends, Carol Diamonds and the Klown.
Several of us have saved comments from The Confluence where you and Carol are gushing over Palin and her family, especially, Piper.
Stop rewriting history.

One of the reasons Doctor Daughter headed to Washington state. she didn’t want religious nuts dictating her practice and she is committed to serving poor women. Her practice in mount Vernon will include migrant workers who live in camps and move with harvests.

There’s been an alarming trend for secular healthcare organizations in Washington state to align or partner (always some vague relationship descriptor is used) with religiously based groups, in particular PeaceHealth which is Catholic. Mostly smaller hospitals are joining but not always. Very controversial here — most people don’t like it but the hospital boards are $$$ focused and think bigger is better. Highline Hospital in Burien went over, also a hospital near Anacortes, and IIRC Skagit Valley is considering this too. Will go look for links.

My daughter asked about that because she was worried during the interview. That is a story I will share with you over coffee next time I am there … possibly looking for a house I can share with my dad.

Snohomish County Public Hospital District No. 3 still will own the land and buildings and will lease them to PeaceHealth, which will operate the 48-bed hospital and its five clinics.

Skagit Valley Hospital in Mount Vernon is in separate negotiations with PeaceHealth. The Cascade and Skagit boards voted in August to affiliate with PeaceHealth. Island Hospital, which had planned to choose the same partner as the other two local hospitals, instead voted against an alliance and is continuing to investigate its alternatives.

Washington hospital districts that receive tax funding and provide maternity services or information to women must also provide equivalent services or information about contraceptives and abortion, state Attorney General Bob Ferguson said in a legal opinion released Wednesday.

The opinion was requested in April by state Sen. Kevin Ranker, D-Orcas Island. An affiliation between a San Juan Island hospital district and a Catholic health-care system, PeaceHealth, stirred opposition in his district.

Wary of religious restrictions on patient options, critics cited a wave of mergers and proposed partnerships between smaller hospitals, including some in taxpayer-supported public hospital districts, with Roman Catholic hospital systems.

“I think it is a powerful and broad-reaching opinion,” Ranker said. “It’s what I was hoping for when I posed the question to the attorney general, and I think it clarifies that women’s reproductive rights need to be and are protected under the law in a public hospital district.”

It’s unclear how Ferguson’s opinion, which does not have the force of law, might affect services at Roman Catholic system-affiliated hospitals. And, to make matters more complicated, not all of Washington’s hospital districts provide maternity services.[emphasis added]

JJ, great post. Going through all those stories of misogyny must have been tough. ((gentle hugs))

I saw an article earlier about the “absconding with fetus” and was appalled that the first legal decision penalized the woman — frightening. Hope for a rational final decision.

What a double standard that a man who furthers women’s exploitation as prostitutes is considered a suitable parent, whereas a woman’s private medical history, and making the best decision for her health, is not.

The last time it occurred was 1888 and the next occurrence won’t be for 77,000 years: The first day of Chanukah and Thanksgiving will occur on the same day, called Thanksgivukkah by some.

What do you think are the implications of combining “The Festival of Lights” with the day of gratitude for the blessings provided to our nation by a higher power (to paraprhase George Washington’s proclamation of November 26, 1789)? The answer should be clear to anyone that is meteorologically inclined: a day with a great deal of sunshine over the entire nation. A day with a lack of storminess and ill-weather.

About our Banner

The Sky Dancing banner headline uses a snippet from a work by artist Tashi Mannox called 'Rainbow Study'. The work is described as a" study of typical Tibetan rainbow clouds, that feature in Thanka painting, temple decoration and silk brocades". dakinikat was immediately drawn to the image when trying to find stylized Tibetan Clouds to represent Sky Dancing. It is probably because Tashi's practice is similar to her own. His updated take on the clouds that fill the collection of traditional thankas is quite special.

You can find his work at his website by clicking on his logo below. He is also a calligraphy artist that uses important vajrayana syllables. We encourage you to visit his on line studio.